Happiness and Heartache

All day yesterday I was thinking of those pots in the kiln. When I woke up this morning I found it surprisingly easy to get out of bed because I knew the sooner I did then the sooner I could get to school and open that kiln! It was the first thing I did when I got there... Christmas.

And as expected I lost a few of my hopefuls but had a couple of big successes that I was really pleased with. (Disclaimer: I am not a photographer. I have never pretended to be nor do I have the equipment set-up to pretend to be. Judge not the quality of the photos but of their content... and then judge nicely!)

Success!

Half-success
Miserable failure (glaze ran like crazy)
Success
Wild Failure (again with the running. A bummer because I really loved the carving on this one.)

Success
And remember these little bitty guys?

Yah, there used to be 3. During my 4th hour final today, one of my favorite classes, full of wonderful kids that I adore, one of my little bitty wheat pots was stolen. STOLEN. When I discovered it missing after school I was devastated. It was my favorite of the three little bitties. Of course it was my favorite, slightly different in shape and perfectly wonderful... the one I was planning to keep for myself because it made me so happy... I searched everywhere because surely none of those kids could do such a thing. It's gone. And I won't be seeing those kids again so there's nothing I can do. No amount of ill-wishing will change the fact that I can't get it back and someone will have to live with a black and rotted soul. Even now I can't imagine a single one of them that would do that to me but I know it was there at the beginning of the hour and gone at the end. There was a snake among that group and I wished them well and gave them candy... I hope you can sleep tonight Snake.

One more
Mostly Successful
Detail

I had work to get done after school but was so physically sick to my stomach I couldn't bear to stay there any longer. I came home and wallowed in the hurt while I escaped watching Karate Kid II until my awesome husband came home. Tomorrow is my birthday and he bought me flowers... big beautiful smelly ones... here, smell!

Pretty, huh? Pretty lucky. And on top of it all I get to spend my birthday at graduation. I wouldn't miss it though, not even for my birthday. We'll go out on an afternoon date instead. All I can say is thank goodness there's only 3 half days of school left. I need to get away and we'll be hitting the coast a week from today to celebrate our one year anniversary. Cool, eh?